Hospitality: A Standard Set in Stone

Looking at society today, a common reaction upon meeting a stranger would be to attempt to be courteous, yet staying on your guard and being suspicions about anything unusual about the unfamiliar person. Observe the Greeks, who lived a couple thousand years ago, they often stressed the importance of hospitality; people would have unknown guests fed and sheltered incessantly. In Homer’s Odyssey, hospitality was very apparent, but why would Greeks always be the most hospitable people as they possibly could?

Often, kindness of the heart proved a good source of hospitality. It was like giving to the poor, being generous in providing strangers at your door. “Straight to the door he came, irked himself to think a visitor had been kept there waiting… … ‘Greetings, stranger! Welcome to our feast. There will time to tell your errand later’” (212). This is Telemakhos inviting in Athena disguised as Mentes. Once Telemakhos notices that Athena was standing at the door, he becomes angry at himself at the thought that a visitor had to wait, as though Telemakhos was obligated to serve anyone who showed up at his door. In this, Telemakhos shows true kindness and sincerity in his actions. If only everyone in our time possessed such benevolence, then the world would be perfect.

Also, being hospitable was widely found everywhere. Everyone was almost expected to be hospitable, as though not receiving weary travelers or inviting in strangers was a sign of malignity. “You were no idiot before, Eteoneus, but here you are talking like a child of ten” (243). Here is Menelaos refuting Eteoneus for even asking whether or not to allow the unknown travelers in. It was as though having the door to your house closed was a symbol of evil.

In the past, they were not as advanced as we are now. Hotels and lodging was nonexistent back then. So travelers had to rely on those who held residence in the area to shelter them at the stops on their trip. “‘Could we have made it home again-and Zeus gave us no more hard roving!-if other men had never fed us, given us lodging?’”(243) As Menelaos describes that the only way that he had made it home through the hardships of his journey was because of the kind souls who had let him in their houses so that he could make it back to Sparta. In ancient Greece, widespread hospitality made it so that hotels were not required.

The Greeks were hospitable people because it was the polite thing to do, not showing hospitality meant you were unkind, and hospitality was the replacement for hotels. If only everyone in our generation could be trustworthy enough so that being hospitable to all strangers would not be harmful to those who open their houses; this should be the ultimate goal of the world.